Civil Society Organization (CSO) Research and Design Consultant

Background
Pact is a global capacity development NGO that has been working in South Sudan since the late 1990’s to support grassroots and national processes for effective conflict management and thereby enabling the conditions for recovery and development to take place. Working in close partnership with Civil Society Organization’s (CSOs) and other community based groups Pact supports a range of initiatives that seek to address underlying drivers and dynamics of violent conflict through peace-building, access to justice and water, sanitation and public health. Underpinning this is a strong commitment to developing the operational and technical capacities of our partners to be able to design and implement initiatives that are strategic, evidence based and ultimately able to respond to the complexities of South Sudan’s conflict environment. A key part of this effort is to support partners to be able to reflect critically upon their own interventions and conduct field research to inform future activities.

In recent months Pact has undergone community consultation process to design a three-year peacebuilding project ‘Enhancing Peace and Security in South Sudan’. The community consultations having been implemented under time constraints have furnished Pact with critical, but initial, local data on priorities for action. This data constitutes a partial baseline and Pact would like to support its long-term partners to reflect upon this information and identify further areas of research needed in order to define specific, targeted, innovative and longer-term projects, to address violent conflict. It is Pact’s intention to provide material and technical support to these partners to implement these longer-term projects. This objective is also a critical part of Pact’s Norway funding for long term partners this is a key part of the capacity development effort to facilitate partner own analysis of the situation, develop better interventions and also access longer term funding.

Scope of Work
Pact seeks two short-term consultants to work closely with our nine (9) long-term civil society partners to design and implement a 6-week research process that will inform the overall design of their long term and strategic peace-building intervention. This activity constitutes a crucial part of Pact’s overall effort to support Civil Society Organization (CSO) capacities to develop evidence based programming, critically reflect on past and future programming responses, innovate within a complex context, and strengthen beneficiary accountability. The research will be specifically linked to Pact’s recent community consultation exercise that was undertaken to define strategic peace-building activities in key conflict areas of South Sudan. Pact is a capacity development organization that implements peace-building, access to justice, governance and water and sanitation activities in conflict-affected areas of South Sudan. Pact works exclusively through civil society actors and community based organizations.

Specific Tasks

The consultant(s) shall be responsible for implementing the following key objectives:
1. Work closely with Pact Senior Management Team (SMT) and Programming Teams (PT) to design the CSO partner research process, methodology and plan of action for the field activities;
2. Provide on-site mentoring and coaching support to CSO partners to facilitate the development of work plans for their research activities especially key learning questions and multi-stakeholder data collection;
3. Work closely with the Pact Monitoring and Evaluation and Program teams to facilitate the data collection process with participating partners;
4. Support CSO partners to analyze findings from the research process and use this to inform their strategic and longer term interventions; and
5. Facilitate a shared learning exercise within CSO partner organizations to draw out best practices and lessons learned.
6. Provide on-site mentoring and coaching support to CSO partners to facilitate the development of their project designs including key activities and understanding how partner’s projects fit into the Pact’s larger peace building framework.
7. Coordinate effectively with the other research consultant to ensure complementarity of approaches, support and overall implementation of this ToR.

Specific Deliverables
• Written research methodology and plan of action developed and signed off by Pact.
• Documentation of meetings, workshop or other events.
• Submit a final report of no more than 10 pages that reviews the learning process and synthesizing the experiences of CSO partners, lessons learned and recommendations for future research strategies.




Qualifications
- Extensive experience in facilitating and conducting research in conflict and post-conflict settings and demonstrates a strong understanding of peace-building practice.
- 3+ years of working in a conflict or post-conflict context.
- Strong experience of working with civil society and community based organizations in a capacity development role and particularly in training on research, project design and planning.
- Exceptional research skills including design (data collection, analysis and use).
- Exceptional drafting skills.
- Exceptional training and mentoring skills including facilitation.
- Post graduate qualifications of a Masters or higher in International Relations, Conflict Studies, International Law etc.
- Fluency in English. Arabic Desirable.


Organization Profile
Pact enables systemic solutions that allow those who are poor and marginalized to earn a dignified living, be healthy, and take part in the benefits that nature provides. Pact accomplishes this by strengthening local capacity, forging effective governance systems, and transforming markets into a force for development.



To apply for this position, please visit our website at www.pactworld.org